At the present stage of the art thermonuclear fusion reactions are excited by laser ignition or magnetically confined plasma processes to yield neutrons.
The released fusion energy for these two processes is in the form of very energetic (.about.14 MeV) neutrons. It is important to convert this kinetic energy to a useful form efficiently without degrading it all to the low thermal energy level of steam for the Rankine cycle.
It has heretofore been proposed that water may be dissociated to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce carbon monoxide radiolytically by neutron radiation, and various patents and patent applications in this field have been issued to the assignee of this invention.
It has also been proposed that the gaseous additive NO.sub.2 in mixture with CO.sub.2 can serve as an inhibitor to prevent explosive back reaction of the dissociated elements such as CO and O.sub.2. Also, SF.sub.6 has been used as an additive. A paper reporting on the radiolysis kinetics of CO.sub.2 summarizing various literature reports was published with the inventor as a co-author in connection with the ACS Symposium on Numerical Methods in Kinetics in New Orleans, March, 1977 (PO-D-77-152).
The article entitled "A Numerical Model of Carbon Dioxide Radiolysis" by R. Kummler et al., published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, 81,2451 (1977), sets forth the general state of the art and literature in the field in which this invention is made.
Thus, considerable theoretical and experimental research effort has been expended in an effort to increase the yields of desirable end products produced by neutron radiolysis. This invention is directed to an improved and safe method of deriving a synthetic fuel component from radiolytically dissociated gases.